Again, it took some extra time to decide who would come out the better team on the scoresheet between Chicago and Boston Saturday night – just not quite as long as it did earlier in the week. The Boston Bruins managed to break the 1-1 tie in Game Two of the Stanley Cup Final against the Blackhawks just past the halfway mark of the first overtime, when Daniel Paille sniped home a wrister past Corey Crawford. Nothing like that previous three-OT marathon.

It was a somewhat surprising win, when taken in context of the first 40 minutes, during which Boston failed to seriously capitalize on chances and fell behind the Blackhawks on shots on goal by a wide margin. In the end, the Blackhawks only outshot the Bruins 34-28, masking the fact that in the early going it was all Chicago, all the time. The Blackhawks bested the Bruins 19-4 in the first period, peppering Tukka Rask while applying so much pressure in the offensive zone that it looked like we we heading for a fairly lop-sided result. But not only was Chicago unable to capitalize on some early power plays, but they also had this happen – the no-goal-that-really-looked-like-a-goal, which could have put them up 2-0 before the end of the first and might have changed the game drastically.

This was it:

The problem is that the referee clearly lost sight of the puck once it ended up within those few inches in front of Rask. Does that mean the goal wasn't a goal? On review, it appears it rested on the goal line before being knocked across by a Bruin skate after the whistle had gone. What could have been.

Two and a half periods later, at 13:48 of the first OT, with everything tied at a goal apiece, this happened:

As Crawford reportedly put it after the game: "Good shot." To say the least.

Here's how the Blackhawks captain, Jonathan Toews, summed up the loss, via the Chicago Tribune, sounding an awful lot like Rask did after Game One:

It had nothing to do with them turning it on, we just started letting them do whatever they wanted to and we gave them chance after chance … In the overtime period we were turning pucks over and they had their way. It's pretty frustrating to give that one away.

But, again, when the other team is able to come back like that, perhaps it's not so much that the Blackhawks let this game go, but that the Bruins just came out and took it. As Bruce Arthur at the National Post put it Saturday night: "If you've got a shovel and a body you'd better finish the job before somebody shows up, trapping you in the headlights."

By the time the third period rolled around, there was so little to show for Chicago's early hammering of the Bruins. Boston had shifted its lines a bit (putting Tyler Seguin, Chris Kelly and Daniel Paille together on the third line), and – again I'll defer to Arthur's knack for description – Milan Lucic was "hitting people like he wanted to make them into two dimensional rinkside ads".

Not to be forgotten, too, is that Bruins impressive penalty kill. Boston held off the Blackhawks on all three of their chances with the extra man. This is nothing new – they held the Penguins to the same over 15 chances throughout the four games of the East final. They'll look to keep that going in Game Three back at home on Monday, and surely the Blackhawks will have to find a way to end that streak if they have any hope of keeping themselves in this series while in front of an unfriendly crowd.

Finally, though he has yet to score in the postseason, perhaps we need to cast our net a bit wider to see the effect Boston's Jaromir Jagr has had on the playoffs. Earlier in the week at Puck Daddy, Sean Leahy noted Jagr's influence on David Krejci of the Bruins and Michael Frolik over on the Blackhawks:

'Every time they showed hockey on TV it was always Pittsburgh,' said Krejci during Tuesday's Stanley Cup Media Day. 'I don't remember any other team. He's a big name. He's very big in Czech, especially 20 years ago when they won two Cups.'

The Bruins forward didn't get the chance to meet Jagr until the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver, when the pair played for the Czech Republic. 'I was nervous,' Krejci admitted.

Fellow countryman Michael Frolik, of the Blackhawks, grew up in Kladno, the hometown made famous by Jagr. Like Krejci, he looked up to Jagr, even wearing No 68 to Florida Panthers camp early in his NHL career. They met during the 2004-05 lockout, playing in the Czech Republic. Frolik, like Jagr, began playing professionally at age 16.

It was no surprise, then that when CBC asked Krejci to name his favourite player, he said it was Jagr. In fact, Jagr was so influential, he even inspired himself.